What We Do in The Shadows

This feature is based loosely on a short film that Waititi and Clement made in 2005. Although it has been 8 yrs since they came up with the idea, this certainly proves that good things take time, but vampire mockumentaries take about 8 years.   Waititi and Clement co-wrote, co-directed and co-star in the 85- minute film, alongside a host of their NZ comedy peers, including Cori Gonzalez-Macuer, Jonny Brugh, Jackie Van Beek and Rhys Darby. The film was shot between Wellington locations and a sound stage in Miramar, utilising a lot of local crew and talent. The interior of the house was entirely created from recycled materials by Ra Vincent, and the costume and make-up design was created by Amanda Neale and Dannelle Satherly, both of whom Waititi has worked with on his previous features.   The shooting took place over 5 weeks starting in September 2012 and completed with one week of pick-up’s in August 2013. It was entirely improvised around a script that Taika and Jemaine had written, but didn’t show to the cast. Because of the random and often prolonged nature of the improvised takes, the guys came away with about 125 hours of footage from which they needed to create 90 minutes of story. Therefore the editing process took almost a year, with the post and VFX being addressed slowly throughout.